Posted on 05/03/2015 7:52:03 AM PDT by Enlightened1
Report: Robots replacing human workers at faster pace
Robots aren't just for corporate Goliaths -- now even the little guy on Main Street is adopting them. The goal: to boost sales and productivity. But at what cost?
Take Sam Kraus, a Hungarian immigrant who founded what became Skyline Windows in 1921. In the early days, the tinsmith traveled around with a small cart to do his roofing and waterproofing work by hand.
Fast-forward to today, and the fourth-generation business based in New York City's South Bronx has left the pushcart era far behind. Skyline, which has evolved into a custom window manufacturer and installer, now relies on robots to do some of its work. In the factory in Woodridge, New Jersey, where it makes its windows, Skyline uses a $150,000 computer-operated machine to automate tasks like cutting holes in the metal and two $20,000 robots to install its windows, which sometimes weigh 600 pounds.
"It allows us to be more efficient—and our plan is to buy more of these robots when we can," said senior vice president Matt Kraus, whose profitable firm brings in about $70 million in annual revenue and employs about 350 people.
The future of jobs
"Businesses will need to hire no people or fewer people," he said. "You can literally have one person start a manufacturing business."
A decline in traditional jobs could lead to shrinking markets for small businesses, said Ford. "We need consumers out there who will buy what is created by the economy," he said
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
That the Luddites turned out to be wrong, in the very long run we should remember, does not mean that the Chicken Littles of today are equally wrong.
We should remember that the human functions displaced by the Industrial Revolution mostly involved muscle power. Opening up immense new scope for what is truly unique about humans, intellectual power.
The problem today is that cybernetics are eroding away the jobs requiring intellectual power, starting at the lower levels and more and more rapidly working their way up.
Have you ever been a roofer? Or a landscaper? I have, both.
Landscaper is very much like being a pre-industrial farmer, admittedly with machines to help. It’s hot and dirty and unpleasant much of the time.
Being a roofer is worse. It’s really, really hot and unpleasant and brutally wearing physically.
Neither pays very well at all.
I thought your whole point was that technology would create better jobs.
Not to mention that the limited number of roofing and landscaping jobs are competed more and more for by people displaced from factories and soon from jobs driving vehicles.
The oversupply of course drives wages down.
To top it off, we are importing millions of people a year to compete for these same jobs.
-— The problem today is that cybernetics are eroding away the jobs requiring intellectual power, starting at the lower levels and more and more rapidly working their way up.-—
Have you tried asking Siri a question? Computers are still pretty stupid.
And despite what the futurists say, thinking is a primarily spiritual activity, so computers will never be able to truly think.
But it’s impossible for us to know the upper limit of human mimicry that machines or biologil/mechanical hybrids are capable of.
Yes, I’ve done roofing but only landscape my own yard - which is hard work enough. That’s why I got myself educated on new technologies. So I can work indoors and use my brain.
I really, really hope I’m wrong.
But I don’t see a way most humans can remain economically productive in the long run.
Which means we need to develop some other way to provide meaning to people’s lives.
“Stuff” won’t be a problem. The cybernetic economy will be immensely productive.
But on what basis is that stuff distributed if the extent to which you contribute is no longer a factor? Is there any way to run such a world other than by a massive government redistributing stuff from the very few (human) producers to the vast majority of consumers?
Yes, they are. However, the rate at which they are improving is amazing.
About 20 years ago I researched voice recognition for the company I worked with. State of the art was Dragon Naturally Speaking. You had to spend hours training it to recognize your voice, and then it worked MUCH better for some people than others.
One of the women in my office could get it to function at above 98%. I could only get it to about 90% at best. Which sounds pretty good, but your spend about the same amount of time locating and correcting the errors as you would just typing it in.
My present Android came with voice recognition built in. It's way over 99% efficient. Even usually inserts commas and periods correctly, and capitalizes names, even when they are also common nouns.
The advancement is truly amazing.
The major issue, however, is that computer tech advance is not linear, it's exponential. If we had that big an advance in 20 years, what will the next 20 bring?
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